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Thirty-eight-year-old Kate Seving Fanning (1865–1951) attended the Mr. Bluebeard
matinee with two as yet unknown friends. When a stage fire spread
into the auditorium, nearly six hundred people lost their lives and hundreds more
were injured. Kate's party escaped without injury, losing only their hats.
It was 1903 in Chicago at the Iroquois Theater on Randolph Street, scene of
America's worst theater disaster.
I found nothing published
that detailed Kate's experience or location in the theater and
only learned of her presence at the Iroquois from her obituary nearly fifty years
later (above).▼1 It revealed that she'd also escaped the Great
Chicago Fire in 1871 and, but for a sick child, would have been aboard the
SS Eastland steamship in
1915 when it capsized and took the lives of over eight hundred people.
Katherine was a German immigrant, arriving in America with her parents in 1885. They were John
and Anna Braun Seving.
Her husband,
Everett H. Fanning (1863–1944),▼2 worked as a lather in the construction
industry, applying plaster to wood lathe walls. According to the 1900 U.S. Census Kate bore
eight children, of which six survived.
In 1903 the family probably lived in a rented home on
Armour Avenue in Chicago.
In the years after the fire
The Fanning family settled into an eight-room home at 6316 Stewart in Englewood.
Discrepancies and addendum
1. Kate's party's uneventful escape
through the main entrance on Randolph Street suggests they sat on the first floor of the
auditorium, where sat fewer than one percent of Iroquois fire fatalities. According
to some newspaper reports, as many as twenty-four of those victims were neighbors of
Kate's in the Englewood
community, a neighborhood on Chicago's south side. With so many victims from Englewood, it
is not surprising that newspapers gave precedence to stories about the fatalities.
2. Everett was sometimes called Edward or E.H. Fanning. In 1880 Everett had
lived with his parents, John and Elizabeth Fanning, in Elkhart, Indiana, my hometown.
He worked then on the railroad.
Chicago
Lumberyard owner died at Iroquois Theater
Emil Von Plachecki
escaped through bathroom skylight
Emma Geik died two days
before her wedding
Other discussions you might find interesting
Story 3021
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